Is the Bible Clear?

            Byron was a Presbyterian, working on his Ph. D. in Old Testament, and it was from him that I first learned about the “perspicuity of scripture.”   Simply put, this notion is an argument for the clarity of the Bible, that anyone can pick it up and glean the scripture’s essential meaning.  This notion is illustrated by the anecdotal stories of persons who pick up Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms and who, upon reading, experience life-changing conversions.

But if the Bible is so clear, then why do we study it so endlessly; parsing sentences in Hebrew; doing word studies seeking the Aramaic phrasing behind the Greek; piecing together ancient manuscripts to infer the social or cultural context of the times in which they were written in the hopes of gaining greater insight into the meaning of each text.

If the Bible is so clear, why do churches send young preachers to seminary to sharpen their exegetical skills, or to graduate schools to write novel-length theses on a single word’s meaning?  Well did the writer of Ecclesiastes understand this phenomenon when he wrote, “of the making of many books there is no end (12:12).” 

John concludes his Gospel with these words:  “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (21:25).”  There has been nothing else so thoroughly studied as the Bible, and while the world has contained all the books written so far, we are continually pushing those limits.

I am often suspicious when I hear someone begin a sentence with the phrase, “The Bible is clear . . . ,” because what often follows is a proposition stated as cold, hard truth, but about which there are undoubtedly various opinions.  The phrase, “the Bible is clear,” is often used as a way of cutting off any contrary, or dissenting opinion.  This tendency is captured in the well-worn argument that many of us have heard:  “God said it.  I believe it.  That settles it.”

Actually, that settles nothing.  When one closes off all discussion, or disallows any argument, then one has failed to grasp the very essence of the Bible as literature.  What we often fail to realize is that the Bible is often in a dialogue, or even an argument, with itself.  As a simple illustration:

Proverbs 26:4 ---“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”  And this is followed immediately by a contrary opinion,

Proverbs 26:5 --- “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”

Perhaps the Bible is clear in its essence.  But the history of Biblical study has shown us that such clarity comes only through constant conversation and dialogue.  How much more we might learn if we precede our interpretations not with, “the Bible is clear,” but “this is what I hear God saying in this text; what do you hear?”